Born Constance Vera Stevens in Holloway, London, blonde actress Sally
Gray possessed one of the most attractive voices in British films –
husky, as well as a hazel-eyed beautiful face. She trained at Fay Compton’s
School of Dramatic Art and became well established in the theatre before
embarking on a series of light comedies, musicals and thrillers in the
30s.
Gray began in films in her teens with a bit part in School for Scandal
(1930), and returned in 1935, making nearly 20 films culminating with
her sensitive role in Brian Desmond Hurst’s romantic wartime hit,
Dangerous Moonlight (1941). She was off the screen for several years
due to an alleged nervous breakdown, and then returned in 1946 to make
her strongest bid for stardom.
This latter involved a series of attractive melodramas, all of which
stand up well today: they include: the classic hospital thriller, Green
for Danger (1947); the decorative Victoriana of Carnival (1946)
and The Mark of Cain (1948); two films which, in their different ways,
capture some of the essence of post-war Britain, a gangster’s
moll in Alberto Cavalcanti's They
Made Me a Fugitive (1947) and the stagebound Silent
Dust (1948); and Edward Dmytryk's film noir piece Obsession
(1949), in which she plays Robert Newton’s faithless wife. Her
final film was the confusing spy yarn Escape Route (1952). She retired
in 1952 to marry the 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne and lived in County
Mayo, Ireland, for some time. In the early 1960s, they settled in a
flat in Eaton Place, Belgravia in London.
